Months ago a friend of mine told me she'd heard from a coworker that Dave's Fresh Pasta in Davis Square in Somerville held cooking classes on site. Since graduating from college I've had several friends who have settled in Davis Square and I've been to Dave's many times. Not once on those visits did I ever learn that you could take a cooking class!
We looked on the website at all of the class choices - sauce making, pasta making, cheese making and more - and we eventually decided on the risotto and gnocchi class. On the website, the class was described as:
"In this class we will demystify two of the most challenging and delicious offerings from the Italian kitchen: risotto and gnocchi! From humble ingredients you will learn to make an easy and impressive spinach and ricotta gnocchi, and learn a couple of tasty preparations and sauces for your airy little pillows. Once you know how to build the perfect risotto, you can flavor it however you choose. A simple risotto Milanese will be prepared to teach you the basics of this creamy and delicious rice dish."
How great does that sound? Keep reading.
The cost of the class was $50. We paid in advance and arrived on a Tuesday evening ready to roll up our sleeves and cook.
When we entered Dave's, I still wasn't sure where exactly they teach these classes. It turns out, you walk into the store and to the right, past the prepared foods counter and there's a narrow door that leads to the teaching kitchen.
On the wall of the teaching kitchen was a calendar of all the classes this month. There is something nearly every day of the week!
Before the whole group arrived, I noticed the stove was already topped with six pots.
Our teacher, Chef Jason, had the mise en place set and ready to go on the kitchen island. One look at those ingredients and I knew we were in for a feast!
Since it wouldn't be Italian cooking without wine, Chef Jason provided a bottle of white and a bottle of red for our enjoyment during class. Each time we finished a bottle, he brought a new one. A girl could get used to this!
Once all of the pupils arrived (13 in total), Chef Jason got us started. He gave an overview of the types of risotto we would be making and his personal tips for a great batch. His mantra is, "There is no such thing as left over risotto. This dish is only meant to be served fresh out of the pot."
He then prepped each of the six pots - three with broth and three to be our risotto pots, starting with a sauté of onions.
Chef Jason immediately offered posts at the stove to anyone who was interested. Here are some of our classmates working on the onions.
Once the onions were ready we added the rice (Aborio rice) and then the white wine.
The wine began to absorb and then we started to add broth to the pot, one ladle at a time. We were making three kinds of risotto - tomato and fontina with chicken broth, porcini mushroom with mushrooms broth and fire roasted eggplant with veggie broth.
Here is the eggplant risotto getting started:
And the tomato and fontina:
When Chef Jason said, "Fire roasted eggplant," he wasn't kidding! He took a whole eggplant, turned a burner on and put that puppy right on there.
He kept talking and gesturing, all the while the eggplant was steaming on the burner next to him. With his bare hand he reached and flipped it over. We all gasped. He didn't even flinch.
After a few minutes and a good char on both sides, Chef removed the eggplant and began to slice into it for our risotto.
The three risotto pots took plenty of stirring, tasting, salting and adding of broth. That process happened over and over again for about twenty minutes. You have to stand over your risotto. There is no walking away. You have to be a monogamous relationship with this dish.
When the risotto was ready, Chef Jason began to garnish each rendition. His secret ingredients? Fresh parsley and grated pecorino romano cheese.
The best part was watching him gut that eggplant! I would be terrified to leave it on an open flame in my own kitchen, but it sure was fun to witness.
Chef Jason could have let us eat straight out of the pots, but he's an excellent teacher and showed us how he would serve the dish, all the way down to the type of serving bowl.
Then we got to dig in! At twelve o'clock we have the fire roasted eggplant risotto, at three o'clock we have the tomato and fontina and at nine o'clock we have the porcini mushroom.
It was nearly impossible to pick a favorite because they were all so rich and delicious in their own way, but I have to give first place to the tomato and fontina risotto.
The class could have ended at that point and I would have been completely satisfied. However, we still had a gnocchi recipe to learn!
For this last part of the class, we learned how Chef Jason first came to know this recipe, which was as a last minute pasta special at a restaurant he was working in when they didn't have any fresh pasta already made for the evening.
We weren't making the most common kind of gnocchi (potato gnocchi), but instead, a version made from spinach and ricotta cheese.
Chef Jason started by kneading the gnocchi dough.
He then rolled it out like a snake (think how you used to roll Playdough) and started to cut.
He then handed the rolling and cutting responsibilities over to the class and we quickly produced an entire cutting board of gnocchi pillows.
The gnocchi went right into a pot of boiling water. Meanwhile, Chef Jason demonstrated how to make a perfect brown butter sauce.
As a finishing touch, he ripped fresh sage leaves right into the sauce.
Voila! I couldn't help but chuckle when he said, "If you really want to impress the ladies, drizzle the brown butter sauce over their plate table side."
Once the gnocchi was ready and the sauce was poured, we dug in. After eating three kinds of risotto this tasted far too rich for me. If it had been my first dish of the night, I would have swooned.
I really have to hand it to Chef Jason, he is an outstanding teacher. Having grown up with a father who is a sensational cook, I never cooked myself as a kid or in college (hello, unlimited meal plan). Since graduating college I've always felt that I am too late to the game to start learning to cook, but Chef Jason made me feel like I could not only do this, but I could really rock it.
I loved that he not only went through the steps of the recipes, but explained why he likes certain wines for cooking, why he likes specific cheeses for mixing in versus for garnish, or why he uses a particular kind of rice. He also talked about the importance of key considerations like salted versus unsalted butter, salting your food as you layer the flavors of the dish, and pointing the handle of your ladle away from the center of the stove so they don't over heat and burn your hand.
At the end of class Chef handed everyone recipes for the risotto and the gnocchi so we could recreate them at home. At the start of our class he told us he would be distributing these so we shouldn't worry about taking notes, which was really nice, because I totally would have wasted the class furiously typing everything into the Notes app on my iPhone.
An added perk of taking the class is: if you shop in the store after the class, you get 10% off your entire purchase. I scooped up a delicious boursin cheese dip and a jar of salted bourbon caramel sauce. Yum!
The spring classes being offered at Dave's are already listed online. If you are interested, I highly recommend signing up now as they sell out weeks in advance.
Have you taken a cooking class at Dave's?
